Religion

When we are isolated with our family, problems that are sometimes easy to ignore become more acute, and the need to receive and offer forgiveness to those around us becomes increasingly evident.

We’d been married only a few weeks when we discovered that growing our spirituality as a couple was going to be much more complicated than the instructions on the packet suggested.

There were once two friends. One day, one of them went to the other, with a heavy heart, less than desirable thoughts in his head, and a bevy of bad behaviours. He really wanted to change them. He wanted to get better.

For the crowds gathered around the casket containing the relics of Saint Paraskeva, everything is just dream and faith. Amazingly much faith. There is also something else. There is the hope of a miracle, a miracle that will cure diseases, cover debts, and make life happy.

You really don't realize what your thoughts about God are until you have nothing left but the conviction expressed in the book of the prophet Jeremiah: My Father, my friend from my youth (Jeremiah 3:4).

"All your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature" through the decisions you make, wrote CS Lewis. If the choices we make really have such an impact, how can Christians make sure they make the right decisions?

Without ever looking for doubt I often welcomed it with interest and gratitude. I did not run away from it, nor did I treat it with indifference. I rather sought to tone it down.

This coronavirus crisis has, for me, some perplexing parallels with a well-known incident narrated in the Gospel of Matthew (14:22-33). The disciples are confined in a little boat in the middle of a terrible storm, almost as we are confined at home today by the emergency laws of our countries.

There are times when we feel that life is hard and that some challenges are beyond our power. But when we look around us, at people like Ben Underwood, we realise that we are not only unaware of the gifts we have been given, but also of the immense power to enjoy life even when those gifts are denied us.

The Grace Community, an American Evangelical church, publishes on its website a large number of e-books, including some religious, apologetic ones, such as Open Letters to an Adventist by Michael Morrison and Joseph W. Tkach, an old and ongoing dispute on the subject of the day of rest[1].

Economic capitalism has a psychological twin, one that is not as bold and brash as its profit-obsessed counterpart, but if we look into the subtle details of our interior universe we find it hidden there.

The idea of hell takes up a dark corner in most of our minds, whether we think about it or not.

Who do you need to forgive?

In the first three articles in this series, we examined what Scripture says about the coming of Jesus, and also how the biblical books of Daniel and Revelation remain the foundations of understanding time.

God is never the one to leave. He is the one who is abandoned. Even when Scripture describes Him as turning His face away, we understand that this is in fact the reluctant and painful recognition of man's decision to go beyond the point of no return in his relationship with God.